


Five Years

by revengeandotherdrugs



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Artist Grantaire, Flashbacks, How Do I Tag, M/M, Mentions of addiction, Mentions of alcoholism, Past Character Death, like i'm not kidding about the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He needed to know if there was someone who had known Grantaire like he had. He needed to know if Grantaire had had anyone else to hold him through his night terrors, if there was someone else that knew exactly how Grantaire’s hair curled in the morning, if anyone else understood the deep sadness and boundless joy that existed at once behind his green eyes, if anyone else had known what it was like to clean paint stains off the sheets and the bathtub and the coffee maker; he needed to know if Grantaire had been loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years

The pavement glistened, streetlights and the colors of neon signs reflected in the film of meltwater; feet and tires disturbing its mirror like surface and sending spumes of gritty water into the air.The wind that blew down the wide avenues between the tall buildings carried the promise of spring and twirled damp rubbish in the gutters like dancers twirled partners; an odd choreography made up of mindless excitement and meandering nonsense.

Police siren’s and ambulance’s howled their losses from around the corners of unseen streets.

Enjolras was in a part of the city that he wasn’t familiar with. Granted he’d only been to New York once, as a student, to see the Met and the Guggenheim and MoMa. Grantaire had fallen in love with the city on that trip, raving about how he wanted to live there, about how the city seemed to breathe art and all things impossible and beautiful. It was fitting, Enjolras supposed, that he had ended up here after all that time.

Five years to be exact.

Five years.

Enjolras kicked at the shattered body of a broken bottle, sending green glass shards skittering away into the gutter. Cars passed. People poured out of the doors of nightclubs and pubs, leaning against walls and lighting up cigarettes; curls of smoke and loud laughter blending with the smog and clamor of the city’s heart.

He considered, briefly, ducking into one of the bars and waiting until he could truthfully say that he was too late.

But he didn’t.

Five years. He kept walking anyway.

...

They had been students when they met, two polar opposites that had spent the first three hours of their acquaintance shouting at each other and the three hours after that having multiple rounds of the best sex Enjolras had ever remembered having. Grantaire had had a stripe of blue paint on his cheekbone, matted hair, lips chapped red with cold and circles like bruises under his green eyes. He was the most beautiful thing Enjolras had ever seen.  

They got an apartment, a small one-bedroom off Rue Peel, where the sun would stream into the living room at certain times of the day and make it feel like the safest place on earth. They took in a cat, Atilla the cat, an ornery old persian that took great pleasure in leaving cat hair on Enjolras’ shirts. They kept ivy on the windowsills and Grantaire painted murals across the bedroom walls.

( _the smell of paint, watery winter sunlight, curled in bed, face pressed into the pillow. “what are you doing?” almost afraid to know “painting you”. Grantaire, naked, before his easel, love bites purpling along his collarbone and down his stomach, hair like a birds nest, dark curls fluffed from sex and sleep. so beautiful Enjolras forgot to breathe. “put your head back, you’re a terrible model” “one generally asks before having someone model for them” “I don’t put much stock in convention” “I love you” “I love you too”_ )

They were together almost fourteen years, never perfect, never beautiful, but it was their own little broken heaven and it was paradise.

He witnessed the seemingly endless cycle of addiction and recovery that Grantaire went through. He held Grantaire’s hand while he shook from overdoses and trembled through withdrawals. And Grantaire had held his hand through speeches, had poured milk in his eyes to wash out tear gas and held him through the broken heart that accompanied it.

( _Sun coming in through the windows, dry mouth, burning eyes “we were peaceful, we didn’t want to hurt them, we just wanted them to hear us, to listen… why R? Why are people so needlessly cruel?”_

 _A kiss to the crown of his head and strong arms holding him closer. the smell of paint and coffee and smoke “I don’t know mon ange, I don’t know”_ )

...

The gallery was across the street, in the bottom floor of a modern looking building. Light from the open doors spilled into the street, painting the sidewalk in molten gold. People in bright clothes wandered inside, brightly colored butterflies, splashes of paint on dark canvass.

Enjolras felt underdressed, suit pants and red coat, barely evening wear, hardly formal. He could always turn around, pretend he hadn’t seen, go and drink until he forgot he had ever come this close.

He crossed the street.

…

He couldn’t even remember why it happened- something stupid most likely; Grantaire getting paint on one of Enjolras’ dress shirts again or Enjolras working too late on a night when Grantaire had made dinner, but suddenly their carefully constructed heaven was falling apart. They fought bitterly, not like they used to, these were actual fights, sharp insults and misunderstood hatred being flung at the person that deserved it least of all, ending with broken plates and someone sleeping on the couch.  

Enjolras had come home one evening to a note saying that Grantaire was leaving. Enjolras had let him go in a fit of sadistic apathy, thinking that maybe Grantaire would come back and trying to convince himself that he didn’t care if he did or not.

But he had cared. And he had searched, for months, until his friends begged him to let Grantaire go,  for his own sake as much as Grantaire’s.

Enjolras stopped looking. But he never stopped listening for the familiar tread of  workboots on the landing or the soft click of another’s key in the lock. He never stopped rolling over in the night in search of the warmth of another body.  

...

The gallery was bright. Paintings hung on walls, well lit and crowded round by art fans and artists alike. Enjolras stood by the wall a while, unwilling to look at what he had come to see. Eventually a crowd moved off, leaving a painting alone. Enjolras, hands shaking, stepped up to it.

He had been hoping that seeing these paintings would give him closure, but instead they left him feeling endlessly lost; brush strokes upon brush strokes made by hands he could pretend he still felt against his skin.

It was a painting of a lamppost, greens and reds and dark blue night and golden light. It looked lonely, all by itself, a pillar of brightness in a world encompassed by dark.

Enjolras remembered that lamppost.

“Can I help you with anything?”

The woman wore a blue dress and her brown hair pulled back in an elaborate bun atop her head. Her eyes were red rimmed and she held a glass of champagne in one dark hand.

It took Enjolras a moment to find his voice, shocked suddenly back to reality from dreams of lampposts and blue snow and first “i love you”s whispered against cold-numb lips in the dark.

“n- no I’m fine, thank you” he wasn’t but it didn’t matter.

“I’m Eponine” she said, transferring her champagne glass to the other hand so that she could shake Enjolras’ “Grantaire’s manager”

“pleasure, I’m…”

“Enjolras” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes… how do you know?”

She shrugged “look around you, you’re everywhere.”

Enjolras looked.

“this blue, the gold waves, the red here... You were always his muse… he never could let go”  

A soft painting of a man, lovingly rendered from memory, seated at a table before a window; lean muscle under golden skin with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail as the figure bent over a book.  Enjolras knew that table, and the window and the view outside of it, he knew the book and he knew the coffee mug at the figure’s left hand.

 

The piece was entitled “five years”

Enjolras suddenly found it hard to breathe.

“come outside” Eponine said,  setting her champagne down on a table and leading him out a small door at the side of the gallery.

The door let them out into an alleyway, a small winding slip, lost dead space between two pitted brick buildings. It smelled of rubbish and snow. Oily puddles formed in craters in the pavement.

Eponine leaned back against the Gallery building, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of her coat. She offered one to Enjolras, who declined politely.

The soft grind and catch of the lighter echoed between the buildings and the gold flame illuminated her face from below.

“he used to say your name in his sleep you know” She said, releasing a stream of smoke into the air on a sigh “He would always wake up happy after those dreams”.

“you were his…?”

“roommate, manager, friend. It wasn’t like that” She took another drag of her cigarette.

Enjolras fiddled with the hem of his coat, searching for the right thing to say.

“I didn’t even know anything had happened until I read about it in the New York Times…”

...

_Memorial showcase to commemorate life of Brooklyn artist. Grantaire Dubois 37, known to friends and art connoisseurs as R, passed away last week in his Brooklyn studio. His cause of death has been ruled as unintentional alcohol poisoning. He leaves behind a large body of fine work, the majority of which will be displayed at a memorial showcase on Saturday March 13..._  

Enjolras had stared numbly at it for a time, black letters swimming in and out of focus before his eyes, the message never changing no matter how many times he read it.

He felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He threw his half full coffee mug at the wall, watching it shatter and screaming until he lost his voice.

...

“I should have been here… just for the funeral, even just for that” He choked, unable to stop the tears from falling “I put him here, I was selfish”

Eponine’s silence told him that she agreed.

“I love him though, I really do… I should have done something, gotten home earlier that day, called him as soon as I realized he had left…”

“everything comes with a price, maybe he was meant to leave so that he could become this” she gestured behind them , encompassing all the art and all the people that loved it with her hand.

“did he ever have anyone else?” It was a selfish thing to ask, but he needed to know if there was someone who had known Grantaire like he had. He needed to know if Grantaire had had anyone else to hold him through his night terrors, if there was someone else that knew exactly how Grantaire’s hair curled in the morning, if anyone else understood the deep sadness and boundless joy that existed at once behind his green eyes, if anyone else had known what it was like to clean paint stains off the sheets and the bathtub and the coffee maker; he needed to know if Grantaire had been loved.

“no, never.”

He hated himself for feeling glad.

“neither did I”

The silence closed in, even the ambient conversation from inside fading into nothing. The streetlights made stars in the greasy puddles.

“was he happy?”

“I don’t know”

 

It was too late for it to matter anyway.

Eponine stomped out the butt of her cigarette and returned to the showcase, leaving Enjolras alone in the alleyway, staring at the weathered brick across from him as if it could give him answers.

  
Across town, police car and ambulance sirens screamed fading “i love you”s into the night

**Author's Note:**

> uhm yeah, so this happened...so have some disjointed angst!  
> I was listening to Passenger's Divers & Submarines while I wrote this. Primarily Intacto for the flashbacks and Two Tales for everything else.  
> I hope you enjoyed or at least didn't want to claw your eyes out because it was so bad. xD


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